


reliquaries

by raumdeuter



Category: Football RPF, Samsung Galaxy 11 "Football Will Save The Planet" Commercial
Genre: M/M, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-25 08:50:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10760835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raumdeuter/pseuds/raumdeuter
Summary: “What did you think?” asks Iker, when he returns later that night. He is flushed and smiling and his hair is damp and a little mussed. His breath smells of something Acatchz cannot place, something sharp and just shy of overpowering. He looks something like he did that night in low orbit, when he had stood on the other side of the pitch from Acatchz.“You played well,” says Acatchz. “But I think you can do better.”(Iker saves Acatchz's life after the game. Things get more complicated after that.)





	1. reliquaries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prompt_fills](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prompt_fills/gifts).



> Dear recip,
> 
> I've been wanting to write this for a while (ever since I saw that horrible, ridiculous commercial), so I hope you enjoy!

Lennox is the first to die.

It happens quickly. One of his fists is half-raised to strike Ripzit when he freezes in midair, and in that instant all of them understand what comes next. He has just enough time to scream before his implants activate and he crumbles into nothing before Acatchz’s eyes. It is a merciful death, a death that that spares Lennox from watching those of his team. It is more than he deserves.

Ripzit is next, then Uuctik: they, at least, have enough dignity to die in silence. Acatchz watches them, too, as is his duty and his burden. He has fought at their sides for as many cycles as there are ships in the fleet, and he owes them this much. A keeper should know the faces of those he failed before his own death comes.

He is no stranger to this. None of them are; not when they have watched the same thing happen to their opponents and their predecessors a thousand times. To fight for the Hurakan is to take the void in hand, to devour it, to make it part of yourself. But the nausea that boils up suddenly inside him is as old a friend as the void. He would be lying to himself if he said he was not afraid.

Across the field, the humans are celebrating, as is their right. They do not turn to watch as Chotkar claws once, briefly, at his breastplate, before his cells tear themselves apart. Either they do not care for the laws of combat or they do not know the customs. Acatchz thinks it must be the latter. They seem a simple species, with simple traditions. They did not fight well, but they fought bravely, and sometimes that is enough to tip the scales. He will not begrudge them their victory.

One of the humans--the tall golden one, the one who scored the last goal--leans toward the human keeper and says something, gesturing to his shoulder. The keeper turns his head to respond, so Acatchz can see his face when he grimaces and tests it gingerly. He must have injured it during the match. But then the golden human says something else and pokes the keeper in the side, and the keeper throws his head back, his eyes crinkled shut, his teeth showing, and Acatchz thinks it is a good emotion, a happy one.

Then the human keeper looks back, just in time to see Ixot double over.

Human faces are so malleable, so open. The keeper’s eyes widen, and his jaw drops almost comically. Urgently he reaches for his teammate’s arm, pointing, and down the line of humans Acatchz can see heads turning, hear voices shouting, but it is too late. Ixot makes a brief, aborted sound, and is gone, and with him the rest of the defense. Acatchz can feel the implants in his spine beginning to spark. He closes his eyes. It will not be long now.

Suddenly, a firm pressure falls on his arm, and in the same instant the sparking stops. Around him, the stadium roars, whether out of wonder or fury or both he cannot tell. Acatchz opens his eyes and looks down.

The human keeper is standing beside him, shouting something in his language which Acatchz’s translator interprets as profanity. There is anger in the set of his dark eyes and the line of his shoulders, and for a confused moment Acatchz wonders what he could possibly have done to anger the human further. Then he realizes that the human is not looking at him, but past him, at the box where the Hurakan Chancellor is seated. A moment later there is more shouting: the rest of the human team have arranged themselves about him and the human keeper, like a small and fragile army.

 _Iker,_ says one of the shorter humans--the captain, thinks Acatchz. It sounds like a command.

 _No,_ says the keeper, a strange monosyllabic sound, and when no reaction from the Chancellor is forthcoming he says it again, louder: _No._

The crowd roars again. It is disgraceful. A thing like this should not happen on the field of combat. Acatchz moves to pull his arm from the human keeper’s grasp, but that only prompts a renewed string of vulgarities from him and a confused hubbub of languages from the other humans, seven or eight at least, too many for his translator to process at once.

They are going to die. They are all going to die. Acatchz stares at the human keeper, at his friend the striker, at the little captain who had run as if his feet were made of light. They are going to throw their lives away seconds after they had earned them because they are too stupid to know any better, and it is going to be Acatchz’s fault.

He raises his head. The Chancellor’s stare is flat, impassive. He does not speak; he never speaks. But neither does he look away.

Abruptly he raises a hand and the implants in Acatchz’s spine seize up so sharply that he throws his head back in shock--the keeper’s grip on his arm tightens once, painfully--before they fall mercifully silent. Then the Chancellor stands, makes a gesture of dismissal, and all the stadium lights go out.

 

\---

 

There is more shouting, afterward.

The old human to whom they all answer is angry. Acatchz has seen enough of human anger in the last two hours to know. The translator he is fitted with had been enough to understand the warriors when they had called to each other on the pitch; it had not been built for anything more complicated. But here and there, words filter in, enough for him to make sense of the situation: _defense,_ and _warning_ , and _mistake_. The humans had not expected to return with a prisoner of war. They are at a loss as to what to do with him.

Two of the humans sit on either side of Acatchz in the cramped shuttle, trying to stare straight ahead, but one of them, a squat-faced human with a little less hair than his counterpart, keeps sneaking glances at Acatchz when he thinks no one will notice. He makes a poor guard, for all that he must be one of Earth’s greatest warriors.

The human keeper sits directly across from them, his expression something close to neutral. When the old human addresses him, he answers in quiet, short sentences, and Acatchz thinks he can detect impatience in the words; there is that same anger creeping in at the edges of his mouth and his eyes, but subtler. Again the old human says that word, _Iker,_  and the keeper responds: Acatchz decides it must be a name, or a rank.

The old human says something in a low voice and claps _Iker_ on the back, once, but the keeper does not look reassured. Instead he glances once at Acatchz, briefly, then looks away, his jaw clenched tight. Acatchz does not know the way regret falls on a human face, but perhaps this is it: perhaps he would not have saved Acatchz after all, had he known it would turn out like this.

Acatchz looks away. Through the shuttle window he can still see the Hurakan fleet hovering. They will be making preparations to depart soon: the journey back to the homeworld is long and difficult, and they will need to refuel at one of the lesser waystation planets before they return.

Acatchz does not remember the homeworld. A trip to the surface means at least half that time spent adjusting to the change in gravity, and half that time again when you return to the fleet, and when you fight for the Hurakan your time is not your own. So it should not mean anything to have the homeworld taken from him when he ought to have died instead.

He watches the fleet jump away from him, and finds that it does.

 

\---

 

There are hundreds of thousands of humans waiting for them when the shuttle lands, but there are also soldiers, which surprises Acatchz. He did not think Earth would still have a standing army when they have warriors like these. But he has little time to ponder the matter. At some unseen signal a squadron of troops surrounds him, and he is marched away, the roaring of the crowd ringing dull and foreign in his ears.

He thinks Iker watches him go. He is not sure.

 

\---

 

The humans are not unkind captors. His accommodations are more spacious than he expects, and they do him the courtesy of providing only a few armed guards, which is surely a sign of trust. Sometimes they speak to each other in low voices, and Acatchz can feel the translator processing in the back of his mind as it carefully files away every syllable, to decode while he sleeps.

At first he tries to mark the days and nights, to track how long he has been a prisoner, but that soon proves futile: he has no windows in his cell, and without the fleet around him he has no way of counting cycles. His guards appear to rotate in and out at set intervals, and food appears regularly: some bland and tasteless mush which he cannot identify.

The humans take blood, and flesh, but only rarely. It is a pleasant change from the Hurakan laboratories, and soon after the first round of samples are taken, the food he is issued improves markedly in its nutritional value, if not its taste.

Sometimes other humans come and attempt to communicate with him in what he gradually comes to realize are different Earth languages, which only confuses his translator further. He has to wonder at the pointlessness of having so many on a single planet. But one of the humans leaves behind a kind of tablet, a primitive thing which Acatchz’s claws struggle to operate, and with painstaking slowness the translator begins to make sense of their most common languages.

His guards speak of simple things: their homes, their mates.

He expects he will stay here indefinitely. He had not expected much more than this. It is preferable to death--all things are preferable to death, now that he has had time to reflect on it--but there is a monotony to it that he had not expected. He grows restless without training; his limbs feel sluggish and strange in Earth’s gravity. On occasion his guards take him outside his cell to other windowless rooms where more humans wait to interrogate him, but they ask him things he does not have the ability to answer.

How to describe the Hurakan fleet? How to describe fighting for them across countless worlds, countless skies? How to describe the feeling of all of it being torn away, replaced by four blank walls? He does not think there are words in any language for it.

One day--it could be ten cycles later, it could be a hundred--one day there are new voices outside his cell door. It sounds like an argument: he is beginning to recognize what that sounds like now. Then, abruptly, the door swings open, and Iker is there.

At first Acatchz only watches him, uncomprehending. Then Iker inclines his head toward the open doorway, and Acatchz sees that both the guards are gone.

“ _We’re going_ ,” says Iker, and the words slam into Acatchz’s head like a thunderbolt. “ _Come on_.”

 

\---

 

Iker resides in a squat building not far from the prison facility. As he pulls into the--docking bay? ( _garage,_ supplies his translator)--Acatchz catches a whiff of rotting flesh. There is a carcass hanging by the door: not human, he can see that much, but large enough to be one. He glances uneasily at Iker, who shows his teeth, his eyes crinkling at the edges, then makes a sudden grasping motion with one hand. In the torrent of words that follows, all that Acatchz’s translator can pick up is that it serves some purpose related to the game.

Perhaps it is some kind of human ritual, he thinks, and follows Iker inside.

Almost immediately something inside the house begins to make loud, abrupt noises, and a moment later a large yellow animal barrels into view. It winds itself about Iker’s legs and pants at him happily as Iker exclaims over it with no apparent distress; then it turns its attention to Acatchz, who stands frozen as it sniffs him curiously.

The animal is called _Doce,_ though whether that is its name or its species he cannot tell. It trots along at Iker’s heels as he takes Acatchz on a tour through the house. Acatchz can only guess at the purpose of most of the rooms; many of them seem frivolous, with nothing but furniture inside, but he keeps his mouth shut. It is not his place to say anything when Iker has proven himself the better keeper. At the end of the tour Iker leads him to a brightly lit room with a bed--larger than the one he had had in his cell--and presents him with a key and a palm-sized communicator, smaller than the tablet he had seen before. Acatchz looks down at them for a moment in confusion before Iker says something under his breath, takes the communicator back, and unlocks it for him.

Acatchz looks over Iker’s shoulder as he brings up a list of what appear to be names and photographs. Iker goes through each of them methodically: here is the tall golden human who had scored the last goal, who Iker says is named _Cristiano_ ; here is an older, distinguished-looking human, who Iker says is _Ancelotti_ , his coach. The other humans all blur together, similar-looking faces with odd names like _Raul_ and _Luka_ and _Ricky_ , but he understands, after a while. They are people whom Iker trusts implicitly--people who can be relied upon, if Iker himself is not available.

He is a little surprised to see that Cristiano is the only face he recognizes. He would have thought there would be more humans from the team he had faced.

“ _Any questions?_ ” says Iker. He is looking up at Acatchz expectantly.

Yes, thinks Acatchz. Why are you doing this? How did you manage to free me? What am I doing here? But he knows the limitations of his translator by now, and he knows he will not understand whatever answer Iker might give. Instead he inclines his head in thought, then reaches out--notices, offhandedly, how Iker tenses, just a little--to touch Iker’s shoulder.

“ _Is_ _it well?_ ” he says, slowly. The words come out awkwardly. His mouth was not evolved for these sounds.

Iker’s eyes widen a little. But then he shows his teeth again, and his eyes crinkle at the edges. He reaches up, too, to pat Acatchz’s hand, where it covers his shoulder. His hand is surprisingly warm.

“ _It’s better now_ ,” he says. “ _Thank you_.”

 

\---

 

After the first day, Iker seems content to leave Acatchz be. On occasion he stops by Acatchz’s door and inquires if he needs anything, but for the most part Acatchz finds he does not. The kitchen is well-stocked with food--Iker must have made inquiries regarding his diet--and Acatchz keeps himself entertained well enough with what is in the house.

It is quiet here in a way Acatchz had not thought he would appreciate. The fleet had never been silent: there had always been the slow hum of the engines and the buzz of orders broadcast overhead. Even in his Earth cell the walls had been thin, and every sound had echoed unpleasantly in his skull. But the unfamiliar silence is strangely soothing now. Better for him to think. He has not had to do that in a long while.

Iker has made it clear that he is not a prisoner, but common sense keeps him indoors, or at least within the fenced-in plot of land behind the house. There is a large video screen in the common area which seems to be a source of news. His translator is improving more quickly these days: enough for him to understand that the world thinks he is still in his cell. It is better that way.

One day Iker comes in while Acatchz is watching the news. There are protests on the screen, as many humans calling for his head as there are calling for his release.

Iker stands beside Acatchz for a while. Even now, what must be days and days after the match, the humans play clips of the Hurakan fleet and recordings of his former teammates. Again and again they play the free kick he saved in the first half--the one by _Cristiano_ , he reminds himself. He had not thought it a particularly impressive save, but the humans think otherwise.

“I miss it,” says Acatchz.

Iker starts, a little: perhaps he had not expected Acatchz to say anything. Acatchz has said very little since that first day.

“You must know,” says Acatchz. He is surprised at how easily the words come, after everything. “How it feels to have the fate of another world in your hands. How it feels to watch them tremble.”

Iker furrows his brow. After a moment, he says, “I don’t.”

Acatchz looks at him, uncomprehending. He knows, now, that the humans do not treat the game with the same reverence as the Hurakan. Their children are taught to play it and are sometimes even sent away to improve their skills, but it is not a form of conscription and they are not sworn to any kind of service. Even now, it is baffling to Acatchz that they were defeated by a species that only thinks of the game as a form of entertainment.

On the screen, Uuctik passes to Ripzit, who puts the ball past Iker with his characteristic flair. He had always been a little too fond of the dramatic for Acatchz. But this time Acatchz can see how Iker reaches out, how the tense set of his face betrays him an instant before the ball makes contact and he rolls away, clutching his shoulder. He must have known he would not be able to block the shot, and yet he had tried anyway.

If Acatchz had been watching the match in the comfort of the fleet’s debriefing chambers, surrounded by his team, he would have thought Iker foolish. Now he is not so sure.

“Listen,” says Iker. He tilts his head with what Acatchz thinks might be uncertainty. “I have a match on Saturday. I’ll leave it on, if you like.”

How long has it been since he has watched a match? Not since--before. It will be interesting to see how they are conducted on Earth.

“I would like that,” says Acatchz, and Iker nods.

 

\---

 

Iker leaves for the training grounds the night before the match--to pray or meditate, Acatchz does not know. In the morning he awakens to find that the television has been set to a different channel. The players on the screen look familiar: one of them he recognizes as Cristiano, but some of the others are the humans whose numbers Iker has programmed into his phone. For a while he amuses himself by attempting to pick them out, until the sharp whistle of the referee interrupts him.

The match is very nearly laughable at first. In the heavy gravity of Earth everything seems slower; there are none of the effortless acrobatics that Acatchz is used to, and there is nothing elegant about the way one of the white-shirted humans clatters into the opposing striker. But near the end of the first half a long pass from Iker turns into a mad sprint in the other half, and it is not until someone in white breaks free from the crush of bodies and sends the ball deep into the opponents’ net that Acatchz realizes he has risen to his feet.

He watches the rest of it with rapt attention. Their opponents attempt to even the score countless times in the second half, and each time Iker is there to turn the ball aside. If he does not possess the grace of a Hurakan keeper, he has the courage of one: that has never been in doubt. For all that Acatchz would have made the saves differently there is nothing he can criticize in Iker’s technique, nor in the ferocity with which he commands his back line; and when the final whistle blows and the crowd erupts cheering, Acatchz can feel a strange frisson of satisfaction run down his own spine.

 

\---

 

“What did you think?” asks Iker, when he returns later that night. He is flushed and smiling and his hair is damp and a little mussed. His breath smells of something Acatchz cannot place, something sharp and just shy of overpowering. He looks something like he did that night in low orbit, when he had stood on the other side of the pitch from Acatchz.

“You played well,” says Acatchz. “But I think you can do better.”

He means it as encouragement, but Iker seems amused instead. There is something strangely disarming about the way he flops, bonelessly, on the couch, and gestures for Acatchz to sit next to him.

“I’m listening,” he says.

“You should not have punched the ball away during your first save.” These are words his translator knew before he came to Earth, but still Acatchz stretches out his hands, twisting his torso to demonstrate. “You should have turned--so. It would have given you more reach. I think you knew that already, but you waited too long to do it.”

He half-expects Iker to argue, but Iker only says, “That’s very nearly praise, coming from you. You’ve already seen my best game.”

It takes Acatchz a moment to understand what he means. It feels only natural for him to count the match he played against Iker as one of many, but for Iker and the rest of the humans--

“It must have been very different,” he hazards.

Iker’s smile flickers at the edges then. For a moment he is silent, and then he says, abruptly, “To be honest, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to come back from it.” He glances sideways at Acatchz. “I don’t think anybody is, but those of us who went out there and played you least of all.”

Acatchz says, “I notice you do not have the custom of playing to the death.”

Iker laughs, but it does not reach his eyes. “You’re right. That was a new one.”

“When I saw you playing that night,” says Acatchz, “I thought all of you must have survived many matches to have earned the right to face us. I was certain you were Earth’s mightiest warriors.”

Now Iker really does laugh, until he realizes that Acatchz is serious. Then Acatchz sees concern creep in along the edges of his expression. He is getting better at reading human faces, or perhaps just Iker’s.

“Acatchz,” he says. “How many matches have you played, total?”

“Ten,” says Acatchz, counting them off on his fingers. “Eleven, if you count the one I played against you. But many cycles of training, while the fleet was traveling from world to world.”

“And if you’d lost a match before you came to Earth?”

Acatchz turns his hand dismissively. “Then some other Hurakan would be sitting here, instead of me.”

Iker frowns. “That night, on the pitch, I thought we were the ones who’d be sent home in boxes. Now I’m starting to understand why we won.”

“I do not understand,” says Acatchz.

“I’ve played over six hundred matches for Madrid.” He says it so easily: not a boast, like Acatchz would have expected of a Hurakan warrior, but a simple statement of fact. It is strange to hear such a difference in tone in another language. Iker is proud, Acatchz realizes, but he is not proud for himself.

“You have lost some of them,” says Acatchz, uncomfortably aware of how petulant he sounds.

Iker raises a shoulder, then lowers it: an ambivalent gesture. “I’ve lost my fair share.”

“And yet you still play.” Acatchz looks at him. “What is the benefit of it? What honor is there in sending out a warrior who has lost a fight?”

“What’s the benefit of sending someone to his death for a simple mistake?” says Iker. “How long had you known all the Hurakan who fought by your side that night?”

Long enough to know that Uuctik had been too cautious--that Lennox had been too rash. Long enough to realize that ten matches might have been more than they had deserved to win. And yet he does not want Iker, who has won so much by losing, to win this argument, too.

Iker seems to understand. He allows Acatchz to sit there in his silence for a while longer, his eyes half-shut, until Acatchz thinks he has fallen asleep. But then he snaps his fingers and straightens in his seat.

“That settles it,” he says. “I’m taking you to meet the team.”

 

\---

 

They leave early in the morning, before the sun has risen: all the better to hide Acatchz’s arrival, Iker explains. His team is always under scrutiny, and even at a closed practice, they run the risk of being seen. But it seems very important to Iker that Acatchz understands how the game is played on Earth.

A few lone figures are already hard at work when they step out onto the pitch. One of them jogs over immediately: Cristiano, who greets Acatchz with a firm clasp of his arm.

“Iker said you’d be coming,” he says. “Welcome to the Ciudad Real Madrid.”

Acatchz nods warily. It seems as if it has been forever since he last saw anyone else from the humans’ team, and he is aware that they had seemed more curious on the shuttle than anything else. He still expects some trace animosity from them; he had been part of an invading force, regardless of what had happened afterward. But there is nothing but friendly intent radiating from Cristiano.

“I trust you have been well,” says Acatchz, for lack of anything better to say.

Cristiano shrugs. “Can’t complain. It’s been hard to match the adrenaline rush from playing in outer space, though. How’ve you been?”

“Probably bored to death, considering what the inside of Iker’s house looks like,” says a voice, and Acatchz turns to see another human coming up beside him. “Is he making you redo his floors?”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Iker, cuffing him in the back of the head, “someone that tall is wasted redoing my floors. He’s repainting my ceilings. Acatchz, Sergio. Sergio, Acatchz.”

“Dude, it'sawesome to meet you for real,” says Sergio. When he smiles, Acatchz is inexplicably reminded of Doce. “Iker’s told us a lot about you.”

Before he can think of a response, the rest of the team arrives, surrounding him in an enthusiastic babble of voices, demanding answers to questions his translator cannot decipher quickly enough. Acatchz glances uncertainly over their heads at Iker.

“You get used to it after a while,” says Iker wryly.

The coach--Ancelotti, he remembers--reacts to his presence with nothing more than a raised eyebrow before beginning a practice utterly unlike the regimented training Acatchz knows. The team goes through their paces quickly enough, but they just as often stop to chat, or tease each other, or stare at Acatchz with open curiosity. In the fleet, this sort of behavior would never have been tolerated, but here it seems commonplace, if not encouraged. Iker himself does not usually participate in the teasing, but now and then one of his defense will shout something impudent at him, or attempt to roughhouse, and he bears it all with an air of amused longsuffering.

It seems as if this was what Iker meant Acatchz to see, but he does not understand why. This is nothing like the team that had played the Hurakan: it is an unruly squabble of humans just barely past adulthood, who talk too much and laugh too much.

And yet there is an easy familiarity between the players that is undeniable. They have lost matches, he reminds himself. It is because of their lack of discipline. But they must have won more than they have lost, or Iker and Cristiano would never have been chosen to stand against the Hurakan.

It is too much for him to think about. Instead he turns his attention back to Iker, who has moved back between the goalposts and is gesturing him over.

Even from this distance he smells faintly of sweat and Acatchz can see his hair is mussed again, and there is something strangely appealing about his open, human features. Acatchz finds himself wondering for a brief, absurd moment how humans choose their mates before he realizes that Iker is holding the ball out to him.

“It’s been a while since you’ve tended goal,” he says. “That’s partially my fault. I want you to show me what you can do.”

 

\---

 

After practice Sergio and a few of the other players run up to him, and with a great deal of excited handwaving indicate that they want to give him their contact information as well.

“You said that Iker told you about me,” says Acatchz, as they head off the pitch. Iker himself has gone on ahead, with strict orders not to leave the building until they can ensure the perimeter is clear.

“Oh, yeah,” says Sergio. “I don’t think he wanted to tell us at first, but Cris started asking questions, you know? And, like, we all saw the video, and Iker wouldn’t have left you to rot in a cell or something. He’s not the type. Besides, I think he likes you.”

Acatchz glances at him, startled, and Sergio laughs. He still reminds Acatchz of Doce, but there is a trace of something knowing behind that guileless expression.

He pats Acatchz on the arm. “I’ll call you,” he says, easily. “We’ll hang out.”

 

\---

 

“I started here,” Iker tells him that night over dinner. “Madrid was my first club. With any luck, it will be my last.”

Humans have an absurd need to waste their breath on things their actions have already said. But when Acatchz says as much Iker only laughs and shakes his head, as if he already knows.

“But what is the point?” says Acatchz. “What do you humans play for? Certainly not the advancement of your empire. Not when it is only a sport to you.”

When you play the game your life is not your own. Even humans, with their limited knowledge of the universe, must understand that. And yet Iker has sworn himself to a team that he must know will brush him aside in the end, as all human teams seem to do. For what?

There is still so much of Earth Acatchz does not understand, and it frustrates him that most of it has to do with Iker: Iker, who shouts and gesticulates and shows every sign of exasperation but, in the end, commands the loyalty of his team in a way that Lennox never had.

He cannot comprehend it. But some part of him thinks that perhaps if Iker had been his captain, he would have been less afraid to die.

 

\---

 

Three days later, someone on the television says _San Iker_ , and another human repeats it, in tones of great reverence.

His translator processes the new word with difficulty. It summons up images of things Acatchz does not understand: sculptures of humans with their hands raised, paintings of humans suffering and looking skyward. It is a word from a human religion. It means someone who is set apart, who has earned the right to speak to their god.

All at once he feels ashamed at his familiarity. It does not matter that Iker had not seemed to mind; Acatchz has presumed too much, and too quickly.

His mistake was in not realizing Iker was held in such high esteem. He should have noticed sooner. It explains a great many things: how the guards had not resisted when he had come for Acatchz. Why an animal carcass had been hanging in Iker’s garage the day he had arrived.

It must have been an offering, he decides. Iker deserves another.

 

\---

 

“I’m telling you it’s a dog,” says Cristiano.

“I don’t know, man,” says Sergio. “It still kind of looks like a horse to me.”

“Why would he want to get Iker a _horse?_ ”

“Why would he want to get Iker another dog?” says Sergio. “Unless something happened to Doce. Hey, you didn’t--”

“No,” says Acatchz hurriedly, “not a dog, nothing happened to Doce.” In the back of his mind, the translator whirrs, filing the word _dog_ away. It had always seemed a little too awkward to just ask Iker.

“A horse, then,” says Sergio, and Cristiano shrugs and pulls up an image of a large four-legged animal and shows it to Acatchz.

“No,” says Acatchz, frustrated, and takes the pen and paper back, trying again to draw the creature he had seen in Iker’s garage. He shoves it at Sergio, and this time he sees his eyes widen in comprehension.

“Pig,” announces Sergio, and this time the photographs Cristiano pulls up are much more familiar.

“I want to get him one,” says Acatchz. “As a gift.”

Sergio is still looking at the drawing, turning it this way and that. “I think he’s talking about _jamon_ ,” he says, and Cristiano frowns doubtfully but nods.

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe it’s supposed to be a thank you present. You know, culturally speaking.”

“Yes,” says Acatchz, relieved that they appear to understand. “Because he is--I want him to be a mate.”

They both look sharply at him, and for a moment Acatchz fears he has misspoken. Then Cristiano grins broadly and slaps Acatchz on the back with surprising force.

“I’ll get you two,” he says.

 

\---

 

It is a very fine gift, Acatchz has to admit: two enormous, pungent haunches of meat, which Cristiano delivers to him with every sign of self-satisfaction.

Iker accepts the _jamon_ with very good grace and, Acatchz thinks, a little confusion. Nothing more comes of it, which Acatchz finds disappointing. But Iker laughs to hear of how Cris and Sergio had helped him buy the _jamon_ , his eyes crinkling up in a very pleasing way, and Acatchz finds he cannot complain about it much.

 

\---

 

He has grown used to Iker leaving the night before a match, so when he hears a knock at his bedroom door in the morning he immediately assumes someone else has broken in.

But it is only Iker, in his training clothes, smiling up at him. Acatchz smiles hesitantly back, feeling acutely aware of the foreign way it stretches his mouth.

“Come on,” says Iker. “I’m going to show you something.”

 

\---

 

“I already know we are going to the Bernabéu,” says Acatchz. “It is hardly a surprise when you are so obvious about it.”

But he finds he does not truly mean what he says. There is something different in the air today: a tension, like a ship poised to jump across the black. Through the tinted car windows he can see there are crowds of humans lining the streets, more of them wearing white than he has ever seen before. The crowds swell as they approach the stadium, and then the air suddenly turns sharp and whipcord-tight, and painfully, startlingly familiar.

It tastes the way the air had tasted before a Hurakan match. It tastes of a city holding its breath.

Then he sees a splash of color: a small group of humans in striped shirts, blue and red, moving rapidly through the crowd. They are gone from sight before he can blink, but he can feel the ripple of tension through the crowd nonetheless. When he turns back, Iker is smiling.

He takes Acatchz into the stadium through a back entrance and up an empty stairwell. All around them Acatchz can hear the thunder of human voices and the stamp of feet, but until they emerge into a small viewing box he cannot see the crowd itself.

Then the stadium is laid out before him, brilliant and white, and for a moment he is at a loss for words. He has not seen this many humans gathered together in one place since the day he stepped off the shuttle. They fill up the stands until they seem to him some kind of vast, interconnected organism, frenetic and pulsing with the beat of distant drums. Past them, he can see small figures moving about on the sidelines, but this time he can pick them out: Sergio, Cristiano, Marcelo, Isco. Then his gaze swings to the opposing team, and he realizes with a start that one of the players is the little forward who had run rings around his defense.

“I was thinking about what you said,” says Iker. “You asked me what the point of all this was. I thought the best way to answer you would be to show you instead.”

 

\---

 

It should be just another match.

It is not.

It is as much a battle as any Acatchz has ever fought in. It is equal turns glorious and brutal, every mistake punished, every stroke of brilliance cheered. On both sides there are players who understand how it felt to have the fate of the world resting on their shoulders. Tonight, they play as if it still is.

Even over the tumult of the crowd he thinks he can hear Iker urging his men onward, but tonight their opponents will not be denied so easily. The little forward leaves a few white-shirted defenders in his wake with a speed that reminds Acatchz of how easily he had done it to the Hurakan. Iker gets a hand on the ball, but a split second later it is spinning in the back of the net.

For a moment the stadium falls nearly silent. Acatchz can hardly breathe.

But then the crowd gathers itself all at once, like an immense creature, and begins to sing again. How they all know the words, Acatchz does not know, but the sheer force of the sound sweeps him up with it, until he is pressed up against the window, roaring his own defiance at the visitors in blue and red.

It means nothing to them, he thinks. And yet it means everything.

 

\---

 

Afterwards he finds Iker sitting in the middle of the abandoned locker room, still wearing his kit. He does not look up until Acatchz has carefully lowered himself down onto the bench beside him, and then his eyes widen in consternation.

“What are you doing here?” he demands. “Did anyone see you come in? Are you all right?”

“Sergio smuggled me down in a laundry bin,” says Acatchz. “He said it would make you laugh.”

Iker pauses. Then he rolls his eyes and exhales slowly. “He’s an idiot.”

“Clever humans often seem so.” Acatchz glances at the wet towels and discarded water bottles scattered around the room and resists the urge to grimace. “I did not expect you to be the only one left.”

“I told everyone else to go home,” says Iker. “No point stewing about it in here.”

He looks utterly spent, exhaustion written in every line of his body. Humans have always seemed fragile to Acatchz, but this is the first time that realization has truly concerned him.

Six hundred games, thinks Acatchz. And if the humans had played as the Hurakan do--

It is unthinkable.

He reaches out, slowly, and Iker lets him turn his head. His eyes are very dark.

“I know this was not how you meant to answer me,” says Acatchz. “But I think I understand you nonetheless.”

When Acatchz presses his mouth to Iker’s, Iker tenses under his touch, but only for a moment. Then his lips part in a sigh, and when Acatchz licks, tentatively, at his bottom lip, one hand drifts up to slide across the plates along the back of Acatchz’s neck.

Iker’s mouth is soft under Acatchz’s, and his tongue is strangely cool, and as Acatchz curls his own tongue around Iker’s he makes a low, needy sound that Acatchz has never heard before. He starts to pull away, more out of concern than anything else, but Iker makes that sound again, and the hand on the back of Acatchz’s neck tightens.

When they finally break apart Iker is breathing hard, and his pupils are blown wide, but he does not appear to be in any distress.

“Christ,” says Iker. “I hope that means the same thing in your culture as it does in ours.”

Acatchz hesitates. It had felt entirely natural at the time, but this--this is something he had not considered.

“It is an offering of loyalty,” he says, feeling suddenly very awkward. “And--”

“And?” prompts Iker. He is a little flushed, now, but he does not move away.

“And more,” says Acatchz, “if you are willing.”

Iker smiles, and reaches up to trace the line of Acatchz’s jaw with one hand. “I might be,” he says, and tilts his head up for another kiss.

 


	2. coda: 2015

“What the hell is this supposed to be?” says the old human, jumping to his feet. He says it very loudly, as if doing so will summon security, or perhaps grant himself a little more courage. But he is frightened: Acatchz can smell the sweat on him, and his eyes scan the room wildly, like a cornered animal.

Acatchz says nothing. He takes another step forward, then another, and the old human shrinks back against the wall, hands flailing for his phone.

“You’re that alien,” says the old human suddenly. “My God. How did you escape--no, never mind. When the police hear of this--”

His phone falls from his nerveless fingers as Acatchz reaches across the desk and picks him up one-handed. The old human swallows very hard, but he is intelligent enough to stop talking.

Acatchz stands there and lets the old human squirm in his grip for a little while longer before he pulls him across the desk and whispers, very softly, in his ear. Then he carefully sets the old human back down in his seat, and walks out of the room.

 

\---

 

“They want to renew my contract,” says Iker.

He does not look as pleased as Acatchz thought he would. In fact he looks mildly suspicious.

“Is that not a good thing?” says Acatchz, after a moment.

“I don’t know.” Iker frowns. “Only Perez seemed a little...enthusiastic about it. I never thought he had it out for me or anything, but…”

“It must have been all of the tricks I taught you,” says Acatchz, and goes back to buttering his toast.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few notes:
> 
> -galaxy11 came out in late 2013/early 2014, so this fic takes place during that season.  
> -the clasico in this fic is not based on any actual clasico in particular, because i assume an alien invasion would have shaken the timeline up a bit.


End file.
